"Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Steve Hatfill.
I'm a medical doctor and a biomedical scientist. I am a loyal American,
and I love my country." Hatfill continued his statement to the press
in early August, " I have had nothing to do in any way, shape or
form with the mailing of these anthrax letters, and it is extremely wrong
for anyone to contend or suggest that I have." He remarked that he
was appalled that his experience, knowledge, dedication and service relative
to defending the United States against biological warfare has been turned
against him in connection with the search for the anthrax killer.

Hatfill

As Attorney General John Ashcroft put it, Hatfill is a"person of
interest." Does this "interest" stem from the fact that
the government has a need to solve a crime and they don't have anyone
to pin it on? After an extremely intensive eight-month investigation,
there is not a shred of evidence showing that he had anything to do with
the anthrax mailings. Last fall, two investigators came to his office
and explained that polygraphs were being conducted on several scientists
in connection to the anthrax letters and would he mind consenting to one.
There was an immediate agreement to take the test - when it was over,
he was told that he passed it and that they believed he had nothing to
do with the anthrax matter.

In February, Hatfill received a phone call from a reporter who all but
accused him of the anthrax mailings. The reporter also called his employer,
Science Applications International. Shortly after that he was laid off.
He then took a job with Louisiana State University to work with a group
of Universities on federal and Justice-funded programs for biological
warfare defense. He was later put on paid leave from the University.

In June 2002, Barbara Hatch Rosenberg, who affiliates herself with the
Federation of American Scientists, saw fit to discuss Hatfill as an anthrax
suspect in a meeting with FBI agents and Senate staffers. Rosenberg and
Hatfill differ on whether the United States should sign on to the international
biological weapons convention. He opposes. She favors. Hatfill said, "I
don't know Dr. Rosenberg. I have never met her; I have never spoken or
corresponded with this woman. I am at a complete loss to explain her reported
hostility and accusations. I don't know this woman at all." Does
Rosenberg see Hatfill as an enemy to the FAS or is this harassment a tool
for persuasion -- to change his views?

The FBI requested to search his home and had promised that the search
would be quiet, private and very low-key. However, within minutes of Hatfill
signing the release to have his residence and property searched, television
cameras, satellite TV trucks and overhead helicopters were all swarming
around his apartment. The FBI agents arrived in a huge truck and were
garbed in protective space suits. Hatfill said, "The agent in charge
apologized to me, saying that the request for this search had come from
very, very high up." He told reporters that his girlfriend's home
was also searched and that the FBI upon their entry manhandled her. According
to him her apartment was wrecked while agents screamed at her that Hatfill
had killed five people. She was put into isolation and interrogated for
hours. That search was also a media event.

Hatfill, a son of a thoroughbred horse breeder, was born in St.Louis,
Missouri, in 1953, and raised in Illinois. He studied biology at Southwestern
College in Kansas, halfway through he went to work with a Methodist doctor
in Zaire. He graduated in 1975, married in 1976, had a daughter, and got
divorced in 1978. He served with the U.S. Army Institute for Military
Assistance based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. From 1978 to 1984 he attended
medical school in Rhodesia and then moved to South America obtaining three
master's degrees and practicing in a South African clinic. He received
a medical degree from the Godfrey Huggins School of Medicine in Rhodesia,
with board certification in hematological pathology from South Africa.
The South African government recruited him to be a medical officer on
a one-year tour of duty in Antarctica, and he completed a post-doctoral
fellowship at Oxford University in England. In 1995, he took a research
fellowship at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland.
In 1997, Hatfill landed his dream job as a research scientist at the U.S.
Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases. A former colleague
described Hatfill as very bright but restless. And though he did jump
from project to project this does not make him an anthrax killer.

Hatfill was extremely upset by the fact that the press has started a
campaign of character assassination. He said," No more than any of
you, I do not claim to have lived a perfect life. Like yourselves, there
are things I would probably do or say differently than I did 10 or 20
or more years ago. Modern information-retrieval technology, coupled with
sufficient motivation, can lead to anyone's life and work being picked
apart for every error, wrinkle, failed memory or inconsistency. Mine can;
so can yours."

"I'm also a human being. I have a life. I have, or I had, a job.
I need to earn a living. I have a family, and until recently, I had a
reputation, a career and a bright professional future." Hatfill ended
the press conference by saying, "I acknowledge the right of the authorities
and the press to satisfy themselves to whether I am the anthrax mailer.
This does not however, give them the right to smear me and gratuitously
make a wasteland of my life in the process. I will not be railroaded."

If Steven Hatfill is indeed innocent, he has been fingered as a fall
guy. Please pray for "truth" to prevail and for the peace of
God to help Steve through this trying time.

April Shenandoah is the author of So...Help Me God! An Inspired Letter/Book
addressed to President Clinton. Since serving as the Los Angeles press
contact for Pat Robertson's presidential campaign Shenandoah has researched
and gathered material pertinent to the "changing" world we live
in. Her weekly column Politics & Religion appears in the Tolucan Times
in Los Angeles and her political commentary is posted throughout the Internet.
Shenandoah conducts Freedom Tea Party forums and wears the unofficial
title Ambassador of Prayer. She sits on the board of The National Council
for Bible Curriculum in Public Schools, headquartered in Greensboro, North
Carolina and ABC-Learn, Inc., in San Fernando, California. She can be
reached at washdc777@aol.com.